| Nairobi Business Monthly November

Enterprise
&Ideas
CONTENTS Ibrahims Kitchen 65 Seasons Restaurant 66
200
The seating capacity of the
rst restaurant that Daniel
Ole Kiptunen opened in
Eastlands
The food chain in the
restaurants business
WHATs ON THE MENU?
Kenyan entrepreneurs who have dug their teeth into
the food and drinks segment, and are having their ll
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U
pon completing his undergraduate and
Masters degree in mechanical engineer-
ing at the University of Nairobi, James
Muriithi Kinoti travelled to Dubai to work as
a sales engineer. But even as he was absorbed
into the cosmopolitan workforce of the Middle
East desert city, his eyes strayed to the small
restaurants that dotted its urban landscape
and in this most infertile of landscapes, an
idea began to germinate.
He returned to Kenya and in November 2010
started a bar around 100 metres from the Ngara
main road.
All along I have wanted to do something for
myself; I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So the
opportunity came and I decided to do it, he said,
looking back at the experience that started him
o. I am one person who loves giving service,
and I am sociable so I love to have places where
I can socialize and give service.
A year later, the bar was doing well and when
the opportunity arose to expand to Fig Tree Trade
Centre, James did not hesitate and opened a
bar and restaurant next to a butchery. Kiss bar
and restaurant, frequented mostly by jua kali
workers, oers standard local fare including
nyama choma, kienyeji chicken and all kinds
of vegetables with an accompaniment of ugali,
chapati or rice.
The lowest item on the menu is quarter
choma plus ugali for Sh140, and if you want to
include a soda it goes for Sh50. And the high-
est cost, we dont have a limit. Since most of
customers are jua kali, someone will eat a half
kilo or a half chicken for around Sh400 or Sh500.
The most popular is the chicken or the beef,
which can be choma or fried, James said.
The innovation that he has introduced, and
which has put him ahead of three similar estab-
BY AAMERA JIWAJI
November Nairobi Business Monthly |
lishments in the area, is where an order for a
particular dish can be placed in advance. You
have my number or the number of the restaurant
or any of the workers, and you can call anyone
up and place your order. Anything that you want.
Like, if you want to eat chicken deep fried with
some kienyeji bhogas, you come at lunchtime
and you get the food ready, he explained.
My concept where you order your food as
per your wish, James continued with a smile,
has given me a foot forward. The other places
tried to adopt my concept but when you have
originality, it is hard to copy.
With ten employees at the restaurant and two
at the bar, James business is growing steadily.
Every day, he sells one cow and 20 kienyeji chick-
ens. The restaurant currently seats 35 customers,
but in keeping with Kenyan hospitality where
no one is turned away, James said,The place
is never full. I have so many friends that if you
come as a new customer we can always create
space for you. He hopes to grow into a larger
establishment but the challenge is access to
nance.
James pays Sh56,000 in rent for the restau-
rant, and had invested Sh1.5million when he
took over the lease from the previous owner,
Sh900,000 of which went into the lease. Today,
the business is worth Sh3.5million.
He said, To open up a big place it will take up
to Sh5million and I cant aord that. Business
is tough; people are spending less.
The changing landscape of Ngara has also
posed its own di culties. We used to depend
on hawkers but now they have been chased away.
And when they started building the road, no
one can cross the roads with the big trenches in
the middle. The saving grace has been the rela-
tionships that he has built over the years with
customers and growth trend of his business.
When you have a restaurant, you have an
upper hand to the guy who owns a bar. The open-
ing time for a bar is 5 to 11pm. As a restaurant,
I can open from morning.
My concept has
given me a foot
forward. The other
places tried to adopt
it but when you have
originality, it is hard to
copy
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I
brahim Mukuye learnt the art of cook-
ing at a young age from his mother as
she prepared meals for her catering
business in Mombasa.
Cooking with my mum started way
back when she used to work with the
Municipal Council of Mombasa, Ibrahim
remembers. She would get orders and we
would cook together in the kitchen
He carried the good memories with
him to the Emirates where he worked
in the retail and fashion business and
upon his return, joined her at her Kizingo
restaurant, DJs. Three years later, having
refreshed the cooking skills that she had
inculcated in him as a child, Ibrahim was
ready to start his own business. So when a
friend was looking for an events organiser
to handle her wedding, he was more than
enthused at the opportunity to arrange and
cater for a wedding of 150 guests at the Reef
Hotel.
I didnt think twice, he said. I knew
I could pull this o! And it was at that
moment that Ibrahims Kitchen was born!
I have always wanted to own an outside
catering business! The best planners are
cooks! And here I was making my friends
dream come true! It was magic!
The wedding was a success, and the
experience catapulted him into catering
for workshops, institutions and private
parties across Mombasa. While he current-
ly caters for events from the comfort of his
own home, he hires temporary employees
when required and has supervised over 20
sta for larger functions.
Because I am based at the coastal
region, most of my clients prefer coastal
meals, Ibrahim said, so I am an expert in
those, although he enjoys adding interna-
tional, continental and Indian food to the
menu. His personal favourite is a Filipina
dish called Kari kari which is a blend of red
or white meat in a peanut butter sauce.
The classic Swahili menu is still best-
loved by his clients many opt for a main
meal of pilau or biryani accompanied with
a vegetable salad, hot sauce, fruit and a
drink, which costs on average Sh350 per
person. They dont want a lot of dishes,
he said. Just a focus on the main course.
That said, Ibrahim focuses on quality in
every step. When my mama trained me
to cook, the one thing she taught me was
dont cook for business. Cook to be satis-
ed. And so I home cook, i dont business
cook. The way I cook for my family or for
a guest is the same way I will cook for my
business.
With his catering business gathering
speed, Ibrahim is scouting for a location
for his own restaurant into which he plans
to make an initial investment of Sh1mil-
lion.
It is important for people to nd your
location easily, and so he is focusing on
the centre of Mombasa city which will give
him access to the business crowd, or in a
residential area like Kizingo or Ganjoni
which oers more space.
Ibrahim said that there are many things
that he does dierently in the kitchen.
Unlike my mum, I plan better in the
kitchen, he laughed, adding I have been
with ladies in the kitchen and they are so
messy. I do it dierently. I plan myself and
I dont have time to talk. So my cooking
goes faster.
But as much as he enjoys cooking, and
looks forward to opening his own restau-
rant, Ibrahim knows that achieving it will
take a lot of eort.
You dont succeed by waking up. You
have to make the decision and work very
hard. He adds, You dont need a million
to start your business! Your passion will
drive you; money will nd you along the
way!
| Nairobi Business Monthly November
S

V
arious initiatives in Kenyas aviation
industry later, Daniel Talengo Ole
Kiptunen learnt that unless you have local
input in a business, in terms of your customer
base, you will nd it very di cult to operate by
banking solely on external markets.
Two sectors appealed to the aspiring entrepre-
neur as he re-examined the business opportuni-
ties available in the late 1990s: supermarkets and
restaurants, both of which were based on local
customers. While supermarkets oered good
potential, they required a heavy capital outlay.
In those days, you had to compete with Naku-
matt or Uchumi, and if you are not known by
the suppliers, you cant make it. You need very
good lines of credit with your suppliers unless
you are planning to buy things and sell them in
which case you can only operate a small shop.
Not a supermarket.
With the supermarket option discarded,
Daniel settled on the food and drink business
and in 1999, he opened a restaurant for 200
people in Eastlands.
It was a hit from day one, he said.
Buoyed by the success of this rst restaurant,
Daniel quickly opened a second at the Jomo
Kenyatta International Airport. Drawing on
his knowledge of the airport from his years
as an employee of Kenya Airways, he was able
to identify an unmet need and so he opened a
restaurant that served people who were either
seeing o or awaiting the arrival of family and
friends. The 24 hour traffic that the airport
received and the captive airport sta helped the
venture to prosper. But three months later, it was
shut down when increasing security concerns at
the airport forced the authorities to close every
security sensitive area.
I had spent millions to put up a structure
and all of a sudden, it was closed. My place was
shoo!, Daniel recounted with a laugh. So I
demolished my place, packed my things, put
them in a warehouse and moved on looking
for other opportunities to expand.
He added with another laugh, Fortunately I
only lost part of my shirt, I didnt lose all of it.
With his courage and enthusiasm uncurbed,
Daniel identied a restaurant on Kimathi street
that was struggling.
At that time business was generally bad so
the previous owners closed the place and I took
it over without even paying any good will.
Straight o the bat, Daniel focused on the
customer and on ways to reverse a diminishing
customer base, and by scrutinising each step
in the business process, he was immediately
able to cut the prices in the restaurant by half.
Instead of having to make food by order,
you make something that is ready made, he
conded. That means you require less people to
prepare the food, and not a lot of energy because
to prepare food quickly you need high pressure
gas, for instance. And as these costs pile up,
your prices must go up.
The business took o and shortly after Daniel
approached another struggling restaurant busi-
ness at Uchumi House, to which he applied
the same concept. Ten years later, both of the
Seasons Restaurants in Nairobi are prospering.
From the onset Daniel was clear that the
venture into the restaurant business would be
a stepping stone to bigger and greater invest-
ments. Restaurants are labour intensive and
management intensive, he said, and so I
Enterprises
&Ideas
I had spent
millions to put up
a structure and all of a
sudden, it was closed.
My place was shoo!
decided to use them to generate cash to go into
bigger investments like hotels.
Today, Seasons Restaurants and Hotels owns
three properties: in Narok, Lake Elementaita
and Maasai Mara. His diversication away from
the restaurant business was for a number of
reasons. First, as a succession plan. If today
I died chances of somebody continuing the
restaurants with the same zeal, same impetus,
same enthusiasm and knowledge is not easy
but if you have a hotel, even if you dont have
somebody as gifted as you, someone will run it.
Second, because the restaurant business
poses unique challenges. For instance, it needs
to generate income higher than the xed costs
incurred such as the rent of the property. Daniel,
for example pays monthly rent of Sh800,000 for
the Kimathi street outlet. And as a business that
caters to the 25-40 age bracket, trends change
rapidly and keeping up with them is di cult.
Finally, entry barriers to the restaurant business
are low which means that new competitors are
forever entering the market.
That said, the hotel and the restaurant busi-
ness share a lot in common as both are highly
customer focused, and this is the greatest
pleasure that the business aords for Daniel.
To manage front line of the business in such
a way as to deliver service at a level that the
customer expects, or even surpass the expec-
tations of the customer, is not easy. But these
customer focused jobs are also the most reward-
ing, he said.